Solar System Design
- Thread starter IStream
- Start date
The flexible renogy panels listed on amazon are fulfilled by amazon. Warrantee says 5 years on materials and workmanship.
I cant tell who will replace the panel 2 years from now if it starts to act up/fail/break. Do I deal with renogy or amazon down the road? How would tbis work?
Thnx
I cant tell who will replace the panel 2 years from now if it starts to act up/fail/break. Do I deal with renogy or amazon down the road? How would tbis work?
Thnx
They are still Renogy's panels. Renogy ships them to Amazon to sit in the Amazon warehouse but Amazon does not pay for this inventory. They are still technically the property of Renogy. Amazon ships & fulfills the order for Renogy and gets a cut of the sale. Warranty after the first 30 days or so (what ever Amazon's return policy is) generally goes back to Renogy..
Went to the renogy website. They offer a 10 year performance warranty. I think it was 10% of rated spec after 10 years.
I may pop for 2 of these and a blue sky mppt controller.
I will be hanging these off the lifelines, flip up style. Still havent decided on a backer 'board' to mount the panels on.
I may pop for 2 of these and a blue sky mppt controller.
I will be hanging these off the lifelines, flip up style. Still havent decided on a backer 'board' to mount the panels on.
I sell the panels for $399 each and the controller sells for $169. That doesn't include wiring which varies with each customer.
UPDATE #2:
I ended up having to order seven panels to get four that are well matched but those four are within 1% in Voc and Icc. It seems that Renogy's flexi panels are either extremely well matched or very poor, with nothing in between (at least based on my N=7 statistics).
The controller is wired in via a dual circuit switch which simultaneously cuts the solar panels off from the controller and the controller off from the batteries. Performance so far has been good, allowing for the crappy Seattle weather, and I love the web accessible interface to the charge controller. One caveat is that firmware updates must be done via a serial connection and Morningstar's MSLoad software, so make sure you've got a Windows computer with a DB9 serial port or a USB to serial adapter and a serial cable at your disposal.
This was one of my bigger project cascades, as I had to re-mount a sold vang first to keep the boom from hitting the dodger under any circumstances (the vang was on the boat before the PO installed the dodger and it was never made fail-safe). Of course, the vang attachment to the Isomat boom was frozen in the track and took some "persuading" to move the 4" forward to the correct location. I also wanted to compound and polish the dodger itself before mounting the panels (see Maine's thread on this for before and after photos), so the whole process took nearly two months to complete.
Attached are a couple of shots the panels on the dodger:
Also shown is the installation for the MPPT controller:
Final Notes:
The system's been running fine for about a month. Even though the controller is mounted without the recommended 6" of free space below the unit due to space constraints, it's been fine so far (it does have 6" above the heatsink). I'll be keeping an eye on that as we get into the summer and the solar power output ramps up but even at full power, I'll be running below 50% of the unit's capacity. In addition, the water on the other side of the hull is never above 55 deg F, so the compartment stays pretty cool.
I had a few questions for Morningstar, which I submitted via their tech service web page and I promptly got answers via email. The exchange follows:
Description:
1. How many data points will the unit log before overwriting old data?
The TriStar-MPPT stores up to 128 days of internally logged data. The oldest day is overwritten by the newest day once full.
2. Do you plan to allow firmware updates via ethernet? It's far more convenient than using a serial cable.
Boot loading the firmware can not be done via Ethernet because the Ethernet circuit is managed by a separate processor that is boot loaded by the main control processor that can only be accessed via the RS-232 serial port due to design restrictions and watchdog security measures embedded in our proprietary coding.
3. Do you have future plans to expand the web interface to encompass the functionality of MSView? I like MSView but would much prefer a ful-featured web-based interface.
We are working on a much more comprehensive and user friendly cloud based monitoring software that incorporates the features of both MSView and the current WebView service. Unfortunately, we are still in the early development stage and do not yet have an expected release date, but it will likely be towards the mid or end of this year.
4. Can the unit use HTTPS for SMTP messaging? My Gmail account basically requires this but it appears that the TM-MPPT is limited to HTTP.
Currently HTTPS and SSL authenticated email services are not supported by our SMTP notifications, but we are working on an update to support them and should be available later this year as well.
5. I have Lifeline AGM batteries which can be equalized but the factory recommends against if there's no indication of diminished capacity. Can I set the equalization voltage and time parameters via a custom charge configuration but disable automatic equalization?
Custom equalizations can still be executed manually with the auto-equalize disabled (switch #7 off).
The system's been running fine for about a month. Even though the controller is mounted without the recommended 6" of free space below the unit due to space constraints, it's been fine so far (it does have 6" above the heatsink). I'll be keeping an eye on that as we get into the summer and the solar power output ramps up but even at full power, I'll be running below 50% of the unit's capacity. In addition, the water on the other side of the hull is never above 55 deg F, so the compartment stays pretty cool.
I had a few questions for Morningstar, which I submitted via their tech service web page and I promptly got answers via email. The exchange follows:
Description:
1. How many data points will the unit log before overwriting old data?
The TriStar-MPPT stores up to 128 days of internally logged data. The oldest day is overwritten by the newest day once full.
2. Do you plan to allow firmware updates via ethernet? It's far more convenient than using a serial cable.
Boot loading the firmware can not be done via Ethernet because the Ethernet circuit is managed by a separate processor that is boot loaded by the main control processor that can only be accessed via the RS-232 serial port due to design restrictions and watchdog security measures embedded in our proprietary coding.
3. Do you have future plans to expand the web interface to encompass the functionality of MSView? I like MSView but would much prefer a ful-featured web-based interface.
We are working on a much more comprehensive and user friendly cloud based monitoring software that incorporates the features of both MSView and the current WebView service. Unfortunately, we are still in the early development stage and do not yet have an expected release date, but it will likely be towards the mid or end of this year.
4. Can the unit use HTTPS for SMTP messaging? My Gmail account basically requires this but it appears that the TM-MPPT is limited to HTTP.
Currently HTTPS and SSL authenticated email services are not supported by our SMTP notifications, but we are working on an update to support them and should be available later this year as well.
5. I have Lifeline AGM batteries which can be equalized but the factory recommends against if there's no indication of diminished capacity. Can I set the equalization voltage and time parameters via a custom charge configuration but disable automatic equalization?
Custom equalizations can still be executed manually with the auto-equalize disabled (switch #7 off).